General Orders, 15 April 1776
General Orders
Head Quarters, New-York, April 15th 1776
Parole Philadelphia.Countersign Norfolk.
The Quarter Master General is immediately to provide Transports to convey four Regiments to Albany. Poor’s, Patterson’s, Greaton’s, and Bonds Regiments, are to hold themselves in readiness to embark, at an hours warning—They are to take with them their Camp-Equipage, which the Quarter Master General will furnish; taking the Colonels, or commanding Officer’s receipt, for the Tents &c. supplied to each Corps.1
An exact Return to be made this evening by the Majors of brigade of all the Guards, where mounted, and number of Sentries furnish’d by each guard.
The Qr Mr General is immediately to provide Six Whaleboats for the public Service—He will report when they are ready to be employed.
The Majors of Brigade, are to attend at the Adjutant General’s Office, near Head Quarters, at eleven every forenoon, to receive the General Orders of the day—Such Brigade Majors as are at a remote distance from the Town, may send an orderly Adjutant to act for them.
Brigadier General Thompson is to command the Brigade going to Albany; he will receive his Orders as soon as the Troops are embarked.
As the Army at this place is lately strongly reinforced, and more of the Continental establish’d Regiments hourly expected, it is no longer necessary to detain any of the Militia; therefore Col. Martin, with 4 Companies of Militia from Sussex County, in New-Jersey, are dismissed with the General’s thanks, for the Spirit with which they stepp’d forward in the service of their Country on this occasion, and for their good Behaviour and service since they joined the army.2
The Officers and Soldiers of Poor’s, Patterson’s, Greaton’s and Bond’s Regiments, to be immediately taken off duty.
Lieut. Dallice of Col. Winds regiment, together with the Non-Commission’d Officers and Men of that Corps, who were lately employ’d at the Laboratory in making Car[tr]idges, are immediately to return to that duty.3
Varick transcript, DLC:GW.
1. These four regiments were to reinforce the army in Canada as requested by the Continental Congress (see Hancock to GW, 25 Mar. 1776). They sailed from New York on 21 April.
2. Ephraim Martin (1733–1806) returned to New York in June as a regimental commander in Gen. Nathaniel Heard’s brigade of New Jersey militia, and in August, Martin was reported to have been seriously wounded in skirmishing on Long Island (GW to Hancock, 26 Aug. 1776). Commissioned a colonel in the Continental army in November 1776, Martin commanded the 4th New Jersey Regiment until the end of 1778. In October 1779 he was elected to the New Jersey council.
3. Archibald Dallas (d. 1777) was commissioned a second lieutenant in the 1st New Jersey Regiment in December 1775. He became a captain in Col. Oliver Spencer’s Additional Continental Regiment in February 1777 and was killed in a skirmish at Cooch’s Bridge, Del., on 3 Sept. 1777 (, 445–47). William Winds (1727–1789) of Morris County was lieutenant colonel of the 1st New Jersey Regiment until March 1776 when he replaced Lord Stirling as colonel of the regiment. Winds left the Continental army in November 1776 to command a New Jersey militia regiment, and from March 1777 to June 1779 he served as a brigadier general of the state’s militia. The laboratory was in the city’s new prison facing the common (, 1:460).